You study endlessly for hours. You review until your brain bleeds. You take practice tests like there is no tomorrow. Finally, it is time to face the fire and take that humongous test for which you’ve been studying your life away. The Scantron has been bubbled in and, at last, the time has come for the exam.
At this point you are beyond ready to be through with such nonsense, so you tumble into the exam room with your game face on and a determined to ace this test persona about you. The test is going as planned until you are seated and the people behind you are discussing a problem or a concept that you have never even heard before. You go into panic mode. Where was that point in my notes? When did we learn that? You then realize that they are discussing a movie they saw last night. They aren’t even talking about the test at all. The damage has been done, though. You are now unhinged and they are distributing the various forms of the exam. You just need to cool your jets. You got this.
Fast forward an hour and you have turned in your test paper and are off tramping about back to your car or your dorm. You can finally breathe and a wave of relief washes over you, but now what? Now, you are stuck in the abyss of the in-between when you impatiently await your results. You begin checking Moodle religiously and cannot believe your teacher has not put up the grades yet. I mean, it has been a whole ten minutes.
Breathe, my friend. The time of not knowing your results is a time in which you must rejoice. You no longer have to worry about studying this or that and the test is over. It is finished. If you make an A, then you are a rockstar. You have conquered. However, if your grade did not turn out so hot, it is truly no big deal. It would be wonderful to have a perfect score or perfect GPA, but it is not everything. Your grades do not define you. So the next time you are freaking out or having a meltdown over a poor grade on an assignment or test, remember that you are worth so much more than a grade. Your intelligence is not measured by a grade either. We try to quantify intelligence, but there is no full proof way to achieve that goal so there is no sense in taking one poor result to heart.
Work hard. Study harder. Do not fret the worrisome grades, however, but learn from them and press on with your life.
